Sam, from Toronto, is one of the top travel video editors. He got started as the video guy for The Chainsmokers.
I’m studying Sam’s work. He’s a master with the drone.
Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.
Sam spent over 500 hours editing this project. A tribute to his brother.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The 3rd book in the Odd series is not quite as compelling as the first two. But I’ll continue on to #4.
I’m no fan of horror. But like the humour. The banter. The philosophy.
Easy reading.
Odd Thomas has been a guest at St. Bartholomew’s Abbey, where he hopes to seek peace and understanding. …
Rodion Romanovich, the abbey’s other guest, is an excellent character. He steals every scene.
Brother Knuckles, former mafia goomba is somehow now a monk. Also entertaining.
Like most everyone, I have long been a fan of Ira Glass and This American Life.
By 2019, the show broadcast to 2.2 million listeners each week, with an additional podcast audience of 3.6 millions.
But Ira was no overnight success.
His advice with long reflection over his own experience:
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. I love this.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Roger McNamee was early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg. And an early investor.
A big Facebook promoter.
ZUCKED is McNamee’s intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world’s most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing.
I’ve not heard any other critic as astute, nor as fair, as to exactly why Facebook is harming and even killing some of their customers around the world.
As Facebook is unable to police itself, governments should step in.
Collateral is a four-part British television drama first broadcast 2018.
It’s a complicated murder mystery – the inexplicable killing of a pizza delivery driver who is shot in a London suburb.
All the acting is good. But I liked best Jeany Spark as Sandrine Shaw; a captain in the British Army.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
A very entertaining book.
The Pack Horse Library Project was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program that delivered books to remote regions in the Appalachian Mountains between 1935 and 1943.
Women were very involved in the project which eventually had 30 different libraries serving 100,000 people …
Giver of Stars is fiction. The story of 5 lady pack horse librarians.
What happens to them–and to the men they love–becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity, and passion.
These heroic women refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers in a landscape that is at times breathtakingly beautiful, at others brutal, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives. …
Click PLAY or see pack horse librarians it on YouTube.
I was blown away by Adrian McKinty‘s 2020 book The Chain.
So — requested more by the same author from the library.
Next up was the first of his Sean Duffy series — Cold Cold Ground (2012).
If you are an Irish writer, the bar is set high. This is literature. And I can’t recall any better insight to The Troubles.
Spring 1981. Northern Ireland. Belfast on the verge of outright civil war.
The Thatcher government has flooded the area with soldiers, but nightly there are riots, bombings, and sectarian attacks.
In the midst of the chaos, Sean Duffy, a young, witty, Catholic detective in the almost entirely Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, is trying to track down a serial killer who is targeting gay men.
As a Catholic policeman, Duffy is suspected by both sides and there are layers of complications. …
Fast-paced, evocative, and brutal, this book is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles and a cop caught in the cross fire.
| 1995 | Deal Breaker and Drop Shot |
| 1996 | Fade Away |
Fade Away is the third novel in his series of a crime solver and sports agent named Myron Bolitar.
Best so far, I’d say.
Myron Bolitar is called by Clip Arnstein, the owner of NBA New Jersey Dragons.
Clip’s star player is missing and he wants Myron to find him.
Clip wants Myron to take Greg’s place on the team, feeling that the other players would be more open with him rather than an investigator. Myron is reluctant yet excited at the same time. Having never had the opportunity to play pro-ball, he is anxious to know if he can make it with the Dragons.
Myron had been injured out of the NBA before his career started. Can he make it this time?
These are light weight easy books to read. But I like the humour. The banter.
Don’t spends too much time analyzing the plot.
Myron’s parter Windsor Horne Lockwood III is always entertaining.
Esperanza Diaz, his assistant at MB SportsReps, is a brilliant character, as well.
Michael Koryta keeps getting better.
How It Happened is his 2018 release.
Kimberly Crepeaux is no good, a notorious jailhouse snitch, teen mother, and heroin addict whose petty crimes are well-known to the rural Maine community where she lives.
So when she confesses to her role in the brutal murders of Jackie Pelletier and Ian Kelly, the daughter of a well-known local family and her sweetheart, the locals have little reason to believe her story. …
Yet Rob Barrett, the FBI investigator and interrogator specializing in telling a true confession from a falsehood believes her story. He just can’t prove it.
As always Koryta is superb in putting together a plot. And excellent writing the bad guys.
I highly recommend this book.
Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, or simply Electric Dreams, is a science fiction television anthology series based on the works of Philip K. Dick.
The series consists of ten standalone 50-minute episodes based on Dick’s work …
Rotten Tomatoes has an approval rating of 73% — but I’d still recommend it. Especially if you like the similar, but superior, Black Mirror episodes.
Good actors. Good acting. Some interesting dystopian stories.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Rick McCharles 